Travel Log

2018 Caribbean Cruise - Ft. Lauderdale - Saturday, November 24, 2018

Today's adventure took us to the Anne Kolbe Nature Center which is part of the West Lake Park, less than a mile down the road from our hotel. West Lake Park consists of estuaries (lakes that have access to the ocean and so are brackish). Mangroves (trees that live in water) dominate the scenery in this park. The Anne Kolbe Nature Center offers exhibits about the mangroves and ocean life, has several walking trails, an observation tower, and offers nature guided boat tours.

Before we even made it to the nature center, we stumbled across these adorable green lizards who had made this beautiful red plant their home.

We were two of six who took the 10:40 a.m. boat tour with Captain Ed. On the tour we saw red, white, and black mangroves, root crabs, mangrove tree crabs, white ibises, osprey, and a tern.

Root Crab (red creature on the root right near the water)

white ibis near the water line

tern (an ocean bird that made it's way into the estuaries)

mangrove tree crabs on the trunk of this tree

We then wandered the mud flat trail.

See the small lizard with the red head in the center of the photo

These next few photos and video are of a great egret, usually a bird easily spooked so we were amazed at how long we were able to watch him.

(Video taken by my husband)

The observation tower gave great views of the whole park, Ft. Lauderdale, and the ocean. If you looked carefully you could even see a couple of cruise ships parked at Port Everglades.

We also checked out the lake observation trail and the trail to the fishing pier.

At 2:00 p.m., they had a talk and feeding at their aquariums in the nature center so we stopped by to watch them feed fish native to the mangroves as well as some other fun saltwater fish like the Florida Spiny Lobster and star fish. As we headed out of the park, we took just a small part of the south trail which gave us views of the intracoastal waterway before heading back to the hotel.

Something doesn't look quite right in this picture...

I believe this is a juvenile white ibis.

Our late lunch/early dinner was delivery pizza from the Cyber Pizza Cafe which was pretty good. We spent some time in the evening relaxing by the side of the pool where I worked on my blog as my husband enjoyed youtube videos. It was a bit surreal to be sitting poolside in late November, under palm trees after sunset, wearing our light, summer clothes.

Tomorrow we board the ship.

2018 Caribbean Cruise - Ft. Lauderdale - Sunday, November 25, 2018

This morning we woke up, packed our suitcases, and caught the hotel shuttle to the cruise port. The shuttle was running a bit late because the airport was chaotic, making all the following shuttles a little late but we still made it to the port about 10:50 a.m. (our check in time was between 11:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.) Upon arriving, we were dropped off, porters took our luggage and we proceeded into the terminal building to go through security.

Embarkation would have been a completely seamless process if it weren't for our fellow cruise-mates. A significant number showed up without a boarding pass (despite I don't know how many e-mails and notices on their website that you need to print your boarding pass and bring it with you). So before these people could even go through security, their IDs had to be compared to the master list (which is quite large considering the size of the ship - just under 7,000 passengers). This held up the entire line, although fortunately the line was fairly short. Once through security, we walked right up to a check-in desk and were quickly walking on the ship.

Our rooms weren't ready until 1:00 p.m. and so we started with some lunch in the Windjammer Marketplace (the buffet) which contrary to other cruises we have taken was not that crazy. It was easy to find a spot to sit and lines for each of the buffet stations were non-existent to minimal.

After wandering the ship a bit and taking pictures of the other ships in port, we were able to get into our room and a little while later received our suitcases so we could unpack before the muster drill.

My parents were on the Caribbean Princess, sailing out the same day.

The Zuiderdam, the ship we got married on, was also in port.

And the brand new Edge, which isn't even open to the general public yet, was in port, although there was a "Dam" ship in front of it so I couldn't get any good photos.

It's behind this Nieux Amsterdam.

We were pleasantly surprised to see the early dining time listed on our sea pass cards and so scrambled to change our show reservation times (but there were still plenty of reservations left so it was no problem). Dinner was on deck 3 in the main dining room at table 154 which is a table way in the back. The servers were too busy to show people to their tables so it was a bit of a scavenger hunt but eventually we made our way. It is a table for two (separated from another table for two by only a few inches). Our waitstaff team has been very attentive so far and the food was very good.

After dinner, we had reservations to the show in the Aquatheater, The Fine Line. The show was a mix of acrobatics, aerial work, tight rope walking, diving, synchronized swimming, and dancing. The skills displayed by the athletes and performers were amazing, especially considering we are on a moving boat!

After the show we wandered through Central Park (which is quite neat at night), had some free champagne as we perused some high end watch and jewelry shops and then made our way back to our room.

2018 Caribbean Cruise - Around the Ship

I have created a series of videos giving you a tour of the ship, the Harmony of the Seas, that we called home this week.

The Boardwalk

Central Park

I created the above video the first full day of the cruise and it wasn't until the last at sea day that they offered a tour of Central Park. So here is some additional information I learned along with a video I took at night.

Central Park contains 10,600 plants, 52 trees, and 2 living walls (which contain an additional 10,240 plants). Each plant is planted in a small square pot so that they can easily be lifted out should the electrical work (which is all underneath the plants) need to be accessed. They have an irrigation system throughout although the living walls pose additional challenges.

One problem they have is the salt which does a lot of damage to plants. When there are rough seas, the beach pool (which is a mix of saltwater and chlorine) spills over into Central Park. To combat the salt, they are constantly spraying the plants to wash the salt off the leaves.

The landscaper has three gardeners although they all only work in Central Park in the mornings as they spend they afternoons (and evenings) doing pest control around the ship. One of their biggest pests are birds that fly onto the ship but can't figure out how to get out of the balconies (with a glass railing).